Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

An anonymous reader writes "Firefox 2.0 for Tuesday, says the Seattle PI. They give a quick recap of some of the new features, and discuss the ongoing IE vs. Fox debate." From the article: "Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated and that Microsoft introduced for the first time last week with IE7, its biggest upgrade since 2001. Analysts said IE7 is a significant improvement over its predecessor, but the big question is whether it will stem Firefox's growth at Microsoft's expense. Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

geez, "tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated" that is beginning to sound like microsoft innovation. Long before firefox existed, I was using tabbed windows in opera. Give credit where it is due.

The only thing that makes me like Firefox more than Opera is the idea of Extensions. The fact that the browser can be enhanced by the users creates a big advantage in my mind. I wouldn't want all those features built into the browser, because it would be huge and bloated, and there's a lot of extensions that without them my life would be a lot harder. The web developer extension makes my life so much easier, but i'm sure that 99% of internet users in the world would have absolutely no use for.

So, to whom should the credit go to?"Web browsers are notable for implementing this kind of interface (called tabbed browsing). BookLink Technologies pioneered this interface design in its InternetWorks browser in 1994"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_browsing [wikipedia.org]

Is taking tabs and applying them to web browsing all that innovative anyway? Surely the first program to interface a tabbed interface or equivalent (ie. switchbar), whatever it's purpose, is the true innovator and the first web browser to make use of them was simply "a good idea".

Tabbed web browsing in itself doesn't seem to be a milestone of great significance. Certainly no more so than tabbed text editing or tabbed image viewing etc.

Sadly, Opera won't either, unless you're on Win32. Which is why I use firefox now, as I no longer use Windows on any machine. Back in the days when I still used Windows, however, I considered Opera the best browser. Particularly version 3.62 IIRC, which could be fit entirely on a floppy disk.

MDI is very unintuitive on its own - tabs make it much better by putting, well, a tab on the page so you know it's there.Closest analogy is Windows 95 property sheets I guess, although they weren't the first (just the first that most people will have used).

Yes, Opera has "tabs". Whatever it's called it's the exact same concept: Click a button on a toolbar to switch to that page. Just because they didn't look like tabs doesn't mean that they actually worked differently. You clicked a button to switch to another child window. That's what tabs do.

Browser cache is always committed to disk. You may have a problem with firefox memory consumption if u never shutdown ur browser.
Perhaps in this case it allocates more memory for cache that is not committed to disk unless ur disk space limit is large enough. I doubt it though.
But if u restart it it never brings more than X MB cache in memory, actually it brings much less, depending on which pages u actually visit.
So in this case, disk memory has pretty much the semantics of RAM and this is why the deve

"Version 2.0 also improves on the tabbed-windows interface that Mozilla innovated"
That is seriously debatable.
I will NOT upgrade to version 2.0 till they offer the old version again. It's seriously harder to use for power users.

Opera might be better, and IE might be improved, but as long as Firefox has Adblock and the filtersetG updater, Firefox is the browser for me, my family, and anyone else that wants do do away with annoying (read all) advertising.

May I ask what are those other browsers you're talking about? I am aware of 4 major browsers other than Firefox. Let's have a look at them and how they compare with firefox.

IE7 - It finally got tabs and a search box but still has crappy html and css standards support. Actually it's a little worse than MyIE [myie2.com] for IE6. I'll pass.Safari - Has a lot the basic features of a good browser and is very simple. Respects HTML and CSS standards. Has crappy PNG support (gamma correction) and for some reason scrolls slowly even on fast machines. It's a fine browser but I prefer Camino [caminobrowser.org].
Konqueror - Although I have limited experience with this one, it looks like a good browser/file manager, but I am un-aware of any features (appart from passing that ACID2 test) that make it better than Firefox.Opera - The only browser that is at least feature-wise better than firefox. But for some people Open Source actually matters. Though even with that into the equation, I can't really say which one is the better browser.

So, while you can argue and I might accept that opera is better than firefox, what are the other browsers that I've been missing that are better than the "overrated" firefox? Oh, and preferably opensource.

How do you use your router to block ads? Does it actually supress/remove ads, objects, iframes, etc. from the webpage, or does it just block the item from loading, giving you a red X or whatever on the webpage? Is it easily updateable? Can you right click on something that got through and have it added to the list? I have a WRT54G if that helps...

Blocking at the proxy only makes sense when you want to attempt to protect a network of users. To protect your browsing session, it's much simpler and much more comfortable to use adblock. Clicking on something and clicking "block this" certainly is much more straightforward than poking around the page source and then adding a rule somewhere.

Besides having far better CSS support than Firefox 2.0, Konqueror also uses only a fraction of the resources. Opening the exact same sites in Firefox and Konqueror will often show a major difference between the two in terms of RAM usage.

For example, when I simultaneously open about 15 of the blogs and websites I read daily, top reports Firefox 2.0 rc3 as using 149 MB of virtual memory. Konqueror, on the other hand, uses a cool 28 MB for those exact same sites. Opera uses 31 MB. So as far as I can tell, Firefox is the lame duck when it comes to effective memory usage. This is with a build right from mozilla.org, without any additional extensions installed. I also disabled the cache for all three browsers, since I've heard that Firefox has a policy that leads to excessive memory usage.

A problem I have had with the Firefox 2.0 release candidates is crashes. This doesn't happen with Konqueror, or any other application I'm using, so I doubt it's faulty RAM. These crashes aren't easily reproducible, and I frankly don't have the time to bother debugging an application that I really don't use, and that crashes the few times I do try it out.

Opening the exact same sites in Firefox and Konqueror will often show a major difference between the two in terms of RAM usage.

'course, it helps that Konqueror can leverage a ton of the infrastructure already present in KDE, and as such, it's actual resident set size can be much lower (since many more of the libraries it utilizes will be shared with other apps).

The question is, how much total RAM is that monster KDE desktop taking up?

Of course, if you're using KDE already, then you're absolutely right, konq

You beat me to it. Seriously though, firefox is highly overrated. Is it better than IE6? Without question. Are there better browsers out there? Again, without question.

But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.

I'm a power user. I routinely switch between Camino, Safari, Firefox, and IE under CrossOver as I'm browsing different sites and designing web pages. But for my friends who aren't power users and want something that "just works", I always recommend Firefox. It's safer than IE and has a few nice features that they'll appreciate, but is still simple and most importantly, is going to work on 99% of the sites they visit. Safari, Opera, Konqueror, and others all have compatibility problems.

But in terms of compatibility with the vast majority of websites, Firefox is far ahead of every other competitor.

You're a whole new brand of naive if you think that FF is more compatible out there than IE. While IE may not be compatible with the hardcore standards, it is more compatible with websites, since those websites know the market share, and specifically cater to IE.

One of the annoying things about the new firefox interface is you can't have as many tabs in the bar at once anymore. Sure, it has a scrolling interface, but I liked the sort of spatial representation of the old system. Is there a way to change the minimum size of the tab headers in the new firefox?

I'm pretty sure the version of Tab Mix Plus or some other tab related extension which will be ported to run on Firefox 2.0 will have this feature. This is the beauty of Firefox... its extensibility using extensions. Sure Opera might be smaller/faster and IE might look shinier but the community that writes extensions for Firefox is what makes it the best IMHO.

...Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month, from 2.9 percent in October 2004."

Hey Folks,

They're both free apps under Windows! How does it really hurt MS if FF gets 100% marketshare? In fact, if FF were to take over it might actually benefit MS. How? IE has been their worst blackeye of the past couple of years. More problems with than than everything else. If MS could make all the bad IE press go away, don't you think that would be a positive? I realize this is like suggesting to Apple to let Dell build their hardware, but does that make it a bad idea? As long as FF adheres to Open Standards, everyone can compete with web-sites equally with it.

If all the people use Firefox, there won't be that many IE-only applications. This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems, which usually means that people stop using Microsoft software. Microsoft's strategy is to force people to stick with their system. Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

This means it will be a lot easier to switch to other operating systems

Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

Why else do you think they are always making their own version of standards?

There are plenty of possible reasons:

* It's easier* It lets you do stuff that you consider useful/necessary/cool but that isn't in the spec* Not Invented Here syndrome* As you suggest, lock-in* They're arrogant enough to think they know best and big enough to get away with it

Only if IE is the most compelling reason to remain on Windows, which I suspect is not the case for most people.

As long as there are web sites that are built for IE (important stuff like online banking) this is a reason for people to stay with IE and Windows. I hear it all the time. As IE looses more marketshare, companies are compelled to think about shutting out potential customers. That will lead to their web sites being compatible to web standards. That will make one less rason for people to switch away from windows. That again will lead to some chair throwing in Seattle.

Listen up, it works like this. If IE had close to 100% market share (as it did in the past) lazy web developers would only develop sites that ran properly when viewed in IE. Now that it has dropped to around 80%, web developers must make their sites compatible with all browsers.

This means that when I view these sites on my linux machine they actually work! It effectively removes one barrier to switching my OS. Now if only the game companies would release linux versions I could put linux on all my machines

Its Sunday after all right now, so why not pray for FireFox? This is FireFox 2.0 Beta running on my Windows XP PC.

1. Starts without maximizing itself to the full PC screen area. Always leaves space available. In contrast SeaMonkey correctly occupies the full PC screen area when starting (but SeaMonkey makes me create a new profile except for once.). FF thinks its full screen according to its maximize/window button but is mistaken.

Not suffered from 1, but then I just bought a HUGE screen, running full screen browsers on it, is fascicle. On point 2, it's not antiquated it's constantly being improved, just the stable releases of the engine are behind the bleeding edge you can get hold of one which can pass Acid2 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbaron/126886608/), but the rendering engine might crash on you.

Good news... There are several [pcworld.com] reports [zimbra.com] that [mozillazine.org] Firefox 2 uses less memory than IE 7. Only a small percentage of users [cmp.com] ever had problems with memory usage to begin with.

My #1 FF issue is memory use. It could be an extension, but I don't think I have any besides IEview. I have three tabs open and Firefox is using 90MB of RAM. It's not uncommon to see it use 200MB or more. That's a bit ridiculous.

Firefox's share of the browser market has grown to 9.8 percent of the U.S. market this month

This has gotta be one of the weirder (mis)uses of the term "market". After all, the competing "products" aren't for sale, and a "market" is usually a place where people sell things.

Of course, it can be difficult to establish a market when the "market leader" does the ultimate price-war thing and gives its product out for free. They did kill Netscape Corp, of course, but somehow they still didn't capture the "market".

There are some bizarre (bazarre?) economic theories at work here, I think.

I just think it's funny that everybody thinks that IE exists largely to keep people from moving to another OS. As if everybody walks into Best Buy and notices that only the Windows machines have IE and then say, "Oh well, I guess I'll have to buy a Windows machine then."

Most ordinary users aren't even aware of the browser wars. It's mostly irrelevant to them. As long as they can surf the web they don't give a crap whether they click on a big "E" icon or or an icon of a curled up little fox to get there.

You should go check out a business sometime.If I could run every intraweb site/application on Firefox, I could convert my desktop to Linux. If I could run Linux, most of the rest of the company could, too. Most businesses don't play games, use photoshop, or some obscure DVD-ripping software that is only available on Windows. Most businesses are stuck on Windows due to the Office stack (which is getting to be replacable) and IE-based applications. Where the business machines go, the home users will follow.

We've been heavily using the SessionSaver plugin feature with Firefox 1.5. When (not if, when) Firefox 1.5 uses up all the system memory and Linux kills it, we restart a minty-fresh new instance of it and all our windows come back.It turns out that SessionSaver doesn't work with Firefox 2.0, and it doesn't really need to because Firefox 2.0 has a session saver feature built in. I have several dozen pages open, and I'm wondering: is there any convenient way to bring those pages forward? Basically I just w

I'm a Windows user. I used to think that Firefox used too much RAM - I have about 30 tabs open in 2 windows, and it consumes over 140MB. In my book that's A LOT.

Few days ago I installed IE 7. I know, installing brand new MS software is a bad idea. But I'm reinstalling this OS soon anyway, so I wanted to give it a try. I opened the same tabs in the browser. Some of them didn't have my cookies, so slightly different pages loaded. But to my surprise, IE7 was taking up over 400MB of RAM. That's almost 3 times as much as Firefox. It got sluggish compared to Firefox. (I have a gig of RAM in a decently fast computer)

I'm sticking with Firefox. I'll test out 2.0 when it comes out, and baring bugs or bloat, I'll be using it as my main browser on all 3 computers I use.

So 2.0 drops on Tuesday, and the biggest topic/. has to discuss about it is whether or not Mozilla actually pioneered tabbed browsing or not? Come on....

I've been using the 2.0 betas since they were publicly available, and have to say it's a big improvement. The individual tab closing button (it's nice...just give it a shot), the spell checking, improvements in the preferences interface....all around, a very nice job!

We know we'll have to support IE6 for years to come, even IE5. But Firefox users typically upgrade their browser quickly.So: do I check my sites in FF 1.5? Do I even keep it?

Before you tell me "but they all render perfectly and the same": it's not true. I keep Firefox 1.07 for this reason here, since it handles quite a bit of elements/CSS in a different manner (even clearing floats differs a little in some cases).

There's also lots of bugs fixed in 1.5, but not in 1.07. And there's also new oddball behaviours in 1.5 not present in 1.07...

FF has 10% market share. I'm just split if it's worth it going into so much detail.. maybe I'll just support 1.5 for a few months and move to 2.0.

The 1.x branch of Firefox used Gecko 1.7Fx 1.5 uses Gecko 1.8Fx 2 uses Gecko 1.8.1, so a much smaller change (as in no new feature in HTML/CSS, just bug fixes I think). The new features are in SVG (textPath support), JavaScript (1.7) and Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]Fx 3 will be the next big jump to Gecko 1.9, with the reflow that will fix Acid 2 and incremental layout bugs, plus more CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 support.

I am a big fan of Firefox in terms of philosophy and features, but have been driven to Opera (which I actually prefer for most things) due to the ridiculous amounts of memory that Firefox consumes.
With multiple tabs open, I can routinely see Firefox over the course of a day or two of remaining open consume upwards of 900K, and it will continue to grow until it is shutdown and restarted.
This is a serious issue for many Windows Firefox users, and the developers seem either unwilling or unable to focus on fixing it. This should have been the number one priority for version 2 in my opinion. It results in a shoddy product that would be unacceptable in a commercial application.
Why is it that this elephant just sits in the room while FF developers pretend it's not there.
Restarting an application should not be the solution to any problem, let alone one this serious.
It's widespread and should have been addressed a long time ago!

I've now used Firefox exclusively for about a year and a half and as far as i'm concerned Microsofts neglect for IE for so long means that on principle alone, i'll never go back.

But I do some website testing and as a result felt it was in my interests to install IE7 now that it is released and see what its like.

Yes - shameless UI tweaks borrowed from Firefox and Opera (did we expect anything else?) but the one thing I do really like is the new magnifier feature for web pages. It just works really rather well and seems to handle most pages well.. and doesn't break formatting at all on any site I tried it on. It even scaled up Flash movies to 400% without making my machine die on its backside.

So certainly for people with sight issues, it'd be hard not to reccomend!

I find "Client-side session and persistent storage [whatwg.org]" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future. There are also JavaScript 1.7 [mozilla.org] which makes JavaScript more Pythonic, SVG [mozilla.org] support, and several other features.

I find "Client-side session and persistent storage" to be quite interesting, and wonder if any major web apps will make use of it in the near future.

Probably not too many, seeing as how web developers rarely cater to the ~10% of users that use Firefox. Personally I like the features and standards-compliance of Firefox, but the fact that 90% or so people still use IE haunts me.

With the new spellchecker they will also be introducing a new attribute to the input tag:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Controlling_s pell_checking_in_HTML_forms [mozilla.org]
Is this a non-standard attribute? Are we going back to each browser adding stuff and hoping the other one stays relatively compatible? I'm not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing. I was just curious.

Gah. With proprietary CSS extensions, they all have the moz prefix. Why couldn't they have taken advantage of XML\XHTML's namespacing features and put the attribute in its own namespace (i.e. moz:spellcheck). For what its worth, though, been using the FF2 betas/RCs for a while, and I love this feature.

We wanted web pages to control the spellchecking defaults to some degree. For example, webmail applications will want to automatically turn it on for subject lines, even though it is normally off for <input> elements.

We discussed with the WHATWG web standards group to come up with the attribute. I'm not sure about the status of this in any of their specs, as I'm not sure there was any strong consensus. That's one of the problems coming out with a new feature not currently supported in any other browser or mentioned in any standards.

Sorry for offtopic, but adding a new attribute that controls the spell checker reminded me of two similar functions. I would like to have a system solution for disabling text selection (because selecting web application interface is dumb) and disabling text completion for input boxes (because for some boxes the completion simply does not make sense). You might be familiar with this -- does WHATWG work on something like it?

hello? eXtensible in XML techs is there for a reason, ok? If a browser doesn't understand a particular tag or attribute, it simple ignores them, like they've been doing for the past decades. Browsers which understand the meaning will provide a better experience.

It's not like people were getting a hard time with IE6, despite it's handicapped CSS handling, for instance.

Actually, I'm not sure it does. I preferred to have a single location for the "close tab" button, rather than individual ones for each tab. By all means add them to the tabs in addition to the static one on the right-hand side, but it was nice to have a button that you could repeatedly click on to close several tabs, without scooting along the line from one to the next.

The IE 7 "Quick Tabs" feature is very cool. It shows a tiled view of all tabs open with all pages rendered so you can quickly find your way and click a tab. I don't think any previous web browser has this feature.

Omniweb has had it for a little while, here's a screenshot [omnigroup.com].